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I came to this book after reading several of Maalouf's fiction works. Even though it is a history book, it is very readable, and if it weren't for all the names, I would have thought I was reading a story. He draws the main figures of the Crusades as real people, not just objects of scholarly interest. I cried when Saladin died. Being an Arab myself, it was hard to shake the feeling of history repeating itself, but obviously the truth is more complex than that. What made the book important for me is the sense that these conflicts, the struggle for unity within the ummah, with "foreigners" ready to jump through the smallest chink in the armor, and with our own leaders and their various quirks and weaknesses -- none of these are anything new. The modern Middle East is just one chapter of a long history. That is much more realistic and reassuring story than the more simplistic version of history we inherit as Arab children -- that we were one long-lived, glorious empire until last century when everything came crashing down, all due of course to the fault of the evil West. Sorry folks, it's time to grow up.

This book is very much a story of leaders and great people. The masses are there, when they're slaughtered or fleeing their homeland or, sometimes, valiantly resisting a siege. But you do not get much of a sense of how the average person lived. I would have liked to know more about normal people and their normal lives, but that would have made this book longer and probably more like a normal history book. There's a trade-off Maalouf made, for the sake of an easily digestible story. In any case, I can probably find what I'm looking for elsewhere.